


Love You Goodbye

by ezis



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Compliant, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, or maybe not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:01:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29188980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ezis/pseuds/ezis
Summary: Sometimes goodbye is the purest form of I love you.orMichael is getting married, Luke says goodbye.
Relationships: Michael Clifford/Luke Hemmings
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	Love You Goodbye

The day was beautiful that spring afternoon. Fortunately, the blue sky was illuminated by a bright sun that didn't overwhelm, it simply made all the guests feel warm enough in that perfectly decorated garden, letting them enjoy in peace the snacks and drinks that were there as reception before having to settle in their positions.

The long rows of seats stretched out across the lawn leaving a long path in the middle covered with a white carpet, ready for the bride to walk on to the altar. Everything was arranged in the right place, every flower arrangement, every chair, every detail, everything perfectly as it had been planned for so long.

Luke had arrived long time ago with Ashton and their families. Also Calum's family, who joined them as soon as they arrived. He had gone a little earlier, coming to the somewhat desperate call of Michael that he needed some of his best friends there accompanying him at that moment of desperate nerves. And the perfect for that was precisely the brunette, always capable of reassuring anyone with his temperance. Luke would have liked to be the one to be there for the oldest, but it was clear to him that he was not the one to do it at that moment for many things. The best thing was that he stayed there, on the sidelines.

However, it was inevitable that despite the good weather, his hands would sweat, clearly on his nerves, and that he could not stop moving his foot, anxious. He never thought that day would come. Or at least he didn't think he would be there in that place, as a guest. But it was a reality.

Michael was getting married.

The anxiety and nerves that ran through his body didn´t allow him to stay still, and he was already getting a little fed up with himself. Without giving it too much thought, he decided to stand up and go get something to drink. Maybe some alcohol would help him calm down, or at least give him the courage to do what he had been wanting more than ever since he arrived.

It helped, of course it did. Or maybe it was the impulse that Ashton had given him when he saw him so unbearably restless, constantly looking towards the enormous house to which the immense garden belonged.

 _“Go”_ he had said tired when he saw him look towards the door for the fifth time in a row.

 _“Where?”_ he tried to pretend to be ignorant despite knowing that his friend knew him too well to be fully aware of what was happening to the guy.

It just took him to raise an eyebrow for Luke to sigh.

 _“I shouldn't”_ he added, looking at his hands playing with the glass between them.

_“What you shouldn't do is repress what you feel you should do”._

And Luke knew he was right. He needed to do it. Maybe they both did.

Without thinking it more so as not to have the possibility to regret, the blonde walked with a firm step towards the interior of the house despite the insecurity that invaded him. When he got to the room where he knew Michael was getting ready he sighed, overwhelmed.

On the other side of the door, Michael was not very different. He was also nervous, maybe more than he had ever been in his entire life. He was about to marry the girl he loved and was hardly able to believe it. He was happy. But also nervous, very nervous. More than ever in his life. And with his head running, unable to stop thinking about many things as he looked at himself in the mirror, with his suit ready to leave when the time came.

That's how he was when he felt the slight knocks on the door.

 _“Hey”_ Luke poked his head out before fully entering without waiting for permission to the room where his friend was getting ready, standing in front of the mirror,

 _"Hey"_ Michael returned the greeting softly, turning around to face the blonde who had walked to stand behind him.

A long silence was present in which Luke couldn't help looking him repeatedly up and down.

 _“You look... beautiful”_ Luke didn´t hesitate to flatter him.

 _“Thank you”_ he answered briefly, somewhat flushed while a smile appeared on his face. _"_ _You look beautiful too”_ he couldn't help saying.

And it was totally true. With those half-chest open shirts that he had decided to start wearing a few years ago, it was impossible that he wasn't. They also made looking unavoidable. Right there, in the hole where the hair that was visible was lost under the white fabric in that perfect body that he knew so well.

 _“Thank you”_ he imitated his words, raising his hand to leave a caress on the other's face but regretting it before reaching it, letting it fall again to the side of his own body.

 _“You are more covered than usual today”_ Michael tried to joke although the environment did not allow it.

 _“Well… I had to look a little more decent today”_ they both laughed before sighing together at the new silence they fell into.

 _“Why did you come here Luke?”_ he asked soft without looking into his eyes, almost as if it were a secret (because it was) although no one could hear them there. The tension was too thick in the room to ignore it.

They both knew what he was there for.

 _“To say goodbye”_ he didn't really want to ruin that moment for anyone, but he had to do it. He couldn't live without talking to him before this important moment. Without saying goodbye definitively. And neither does Michael.

That room, that moment, felt lost in time. As if they weren't in a house surrounded by people. As if they weren't on that day, at that moment. Suddenly it was just them, in that room without space or time, full of silence and from then on a secret. Michael and Luke being _MichaelyLuke_ , even if only for that moment.

Luke approached almost fearfully, as if he were going straight for a injured animal, but knowing that he would take nothing bad from the older. I could never.

So he kept getting closer, just enough to bring their noses together not being rejected, lightly brushing his fingertips against the opposite cheek just before placing his lips on Michael's in the softest way in the world.

 _"Luke…"_ he sighed, there, over the opposite mouth. Feeling the sensitive skin of his lips against Luke's.

That wasn't right, it wasn't what they had planned. It shouldn't be happening. And even though they were both clear about it, they weren't able to avoid it. They were never able to do it. Since the two of them had girlfriends they knew they had to stop with that strange relationship they had. They said goodbye so many times saying that it would be the last one that they had already lost count. The problem was that, no matter how hard they tried it was impossible not to fall back into each other's arms. They spent too much time together not to, practically every day of their lives, and there were too many feelings locked inside. They never planned for something to happen between them, quite the opposite, but inevitably it always ended up doing it. They were like two opposites that attracted each other and they couldn't spend too much time close without coming together.

It had also happened almost unintentionally just a week ago, after Michael's bachelor party, getting even more out of hand that time. The extra drinks they were carrying hadn't helped, and that was how they had ended up saying “definitely” goodbye once more.

 _“What are we doing Michael?”_ Luke had said as soon as they reached the hotel room where they would spend the night with their friends, separating from the desperate kiss that they had shared from the hallway and that had started long before in the bathroom of the disco.

 _“I don't know”_ Michael had answered with heavy breathing, attacking the opposite lips again. _“Say goodbye to this I suppose. But I don't want to think about it”._

With those last words the conversation died. Giving way to the path of caresses on the opposite skin that felt more intense and deep than ever before, as if they wanted to stay forever etched on the opposite skin. Each contact of the mouths on the opposite body, savoring everything in its path for the last time. They let themselves be carried away when they fell into that hotel bed, entangling themselves between the sheets, losing themselves in the sensations they generated each time they gave themselves pleasure in that way, between sweat and moans.

This is how they ended that night. The last one, Luke couldn't help but remember.

Now it was different, it had only been a simple brush of lips, but it had made them feel too much.

 _“I know”_ he said, barely separating at the mention of his name. _“I just ... I don't know. I needed it I guess”_ he murmured back still a few millimeters from the other, his lips practically brushing with each spoken word.

 _“I know”_ Michael repeated. _“Maybe I did it too”._

Then Michael brought his lips back together. This time in a kiss a little less soft and a little longer, savoring each other, feeling the other for the last time. The hands of both holding the opposite face, not wanting to let go.

Knowing that it was definitely the last time made it more difficult. This time for real not like the other thousands in recent years who said it would be. That is why it was a kiss as heartfelt and longed for as it was bitter. It was a bittersweet kiss, the kind that tastes like farewell. Because it was. His farewell.

 _“I love you”_ it left Michael's lips without even thinking about it as soon as they parted, still with his hands on the opposite face.

 _"I know"_ Luke replied with his eyes still closed. He knew it, he really knew it. _“And I love you too”._

 _“I know”_ and Michael also knew it, it was one of the few certainties he had, even though they had never told him that way, beyond friendship. _“I would have liked so much that we could ...”_

He didn't even have to complete the sentence because Luke knew too. It had been a long time that this had been going around in their heads.

They wondered maybe more than they should what would have happened if their feelings for each other had been said much earlier. But really, with each and every word. Before letting both slip like sand through the fingers of the other, and before they fall in love with other people. They also wondered what would have happened if they had decided to pay attention to what they felt without caring what might happen to their friendship or the band that little by little was succeeding as they had always dreamed while they fell in love with each kiss and caress shared with some silly excuse. But above all, they wondered what would have happened if those adolescents, barely 14 and 15 years old, had told each other what they felt when their lips secretly brushed against each other in Michael's room, too scared of what the world might think to say anything.

Maybe they could have been happy, maybe the band hadn't existed and they wouldn't have the best jobs in the world, nor would they be fulfilling their dream. But maybe, just maybe, in that parallel universe where everything went wrong except their relationship, they could be happy. They could explore what the other made them feel, they could tell their parents that they were together, they could have fallen in love little by little, until there was no going back and live that love like no other. Maybe, and only maybe, in this universe, the real one, they had also fallen in love, but on the contrary everything had gone well except what they had kept quiet, enjoying the little moments in which their bodies felt. And maybe that had to be the price to pay to live everything they had lived and to get to where they had arrived, and they didn't know if they regretted it.

 _“And me too”_ he also would have liked things to be different. _“But sometimes there are things that go beyond what oneself feels, right?”_

Michael could simply nod, holding back the tears that the anguish of that moment made him want to let go.

 _“And now you're going to marry her, because you love her too”_ it wasn't a question, he knew it too. _“And you're going to be happy, very happy Micky”_ he said the last word wiping the rebellious tear that escaped without permission from his green eyes. It had been so long since he called him that...

 _"I'm going to miss you"_ he whispered, stroking his nose with the opposite. Because despite seeing each other every day they had reached an agreement that this time they planned to fulfill.

As soon as the oldest got married: no more kisses, no more sex, no more anything about that strange relationship they had, which was the only one they had been able to have during all those years. Almost ten, sometimes they thought in surprise. Over and over again in that time they had decided to stop, because there was too much at stake even if it was not a loving relationship that he had with his best friend. But they never could, they always fell again. That is why they decided to set a deadline. That would be it, the wedding. Once the wedding was over they would forget everything.

 _“And I you, you don't know how much”_ the blue-eyed one again brought his lips together in a soft kiss. Now yes, the last one.

 _“Goodbye Luke”_ he whispered. _“I love you”_ he couldn't help repeating once more when he saw the blonde open the door, ending everything as soon as he walked through it.

The minor turned around, remaining on the other side, staring him in the eyes, and before the only thing that was heard in that absolute silence was the click of the door closing, those last words of farewell resounded. Because sometimes saying goodbye is the purest form of love.

_“Love you, goodbye”._

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language so I apologize if there are mistakes.  
> Thanks so much for reading, hope you enjoyed it <3


End file.
